


Worth Falling For

by thundercrackfic



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Not Unhappy Ending, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley's Fall (Good Omens), Gen, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), I mean it's not exactly happy but it's soft and Crowley's really fine since he has Aziraphale, POV Crowley (Good Omens), POV First Person, Post-Fall (Good Omens), Pre-Canon: Good Omens, Pre-Fall (Good Omens), The Fall (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22446514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercrackfic/pseuds/thundercrackfic
Summary: Crowley explains what Falling was like, in his own words.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 86





	Worth Falling For

Yeah. I remember it. Every bit of it. Well, every bit that I remember. Wait, that’s a tautology, isn’t it? I don’t know what I don’t remember.

Sorry. I’ll start again.

Yeah, I want to tell you. Seems like you should know.

Forgive me if I don’t quite make sense. Some of it never made sense even to me. I didn’t mean to Fall. Didn’t know what was at stake.

Not sure what I would’ve done different if I did, though. I never was good at toeing the line.

Anyway. I’m getting sidetracked again.

The Morningstar fell first. He was there one minute, and then it was like a bloody black hole opened up in his chest and pulled him inside out right through it. Horrible thing to see. I’ll never forget the moment. He was beautiful, you know, then. Before. He just transfixed you. He sang, and you listened. He made so much sense when you were listening to him. Less so, now, but he makes up for that by making you quake down to the core of you. Convincing guy, one way or another.

He was speechifying, when it happened. Right in the middle of some self-important sentence. Then, zoop! Inside out and down he went through the black hole in the middle of him. Just him, at first. Then Ba’al. Then another one, across the battlefield, ‘m not sure who.

Were you near the battle when it happened? –oh, protecting the library, of course. You _would_ do that. Lucky you, not seeing a bunch of inside-out angels in your mind’s eye the rest of eternity.

Seems like She would’ve been powerful enough to drop us all at once. But She plucked Her grace out of us one at a time. So everybody could see each one of us Fall. It was right in the middle of battle and everyone just stopped, on both sides, quit swinging their swords, quit flying formations at each other, just stopped and stared and went ‘oh my God.’

It just kept going and going. Fucking terrifying, you could tell all the angels started wondering if they’d be next. Well, maybe not all of them. You know the Archangel Fucking Gabriel never suspected he’d Fall.

I knew, though. Or at least I thought. But I hoped. The more angels Fell, the more I knew she’d take me next. She kept not taking me next. I did hope, bugger all. The wait was horrible. I couldn’t even stay up. I fell out of the sky even before I Fell. I just had to lie down on Heaven’s floor. Prostrate myself. I prayed, I did. I begged Her. But She didn’t talk to me then and hasn’t talked to me since.

Don’t cry, angel. It’s all behind me now, and I’m still here, aren’t I? Do you want me to stop?

–Okay.

Well. A lot of other angels fell before I did, but then it was my turn.

Fuck. It’s impossible to describe, really. Words aren’t adequate. Pour me another, will you?

That’s a good vintage.

Okay. Right, I’ll try. It’s like—one minute I was lying on the floor, and then it was like there was no floor anymore. And no light. And no sound. And like there was a great big gaping hole in me. A sucking drain. A starving pit. A missing piece. Like something had been holding me in Heaven all that time, and I didn’t realize it until it just disappeared. We call it Falling because that’s sort of what it felt like but it was also like being crushed. Squished into nothing. Until nothing was all I was. A big sucking hole of nothing. Should never have been created. Great fucking mistake, me.

It lasted forever. Well, I guess. Hard to say since time wasn’t a thing yet. The worst part was the fucking loneliness. How’s my glass empty already? –I needed that, thanks.

Made us all really grateful for Hell, I think, at least in the beginning, because at least we weren’t alone anymore. Joke was on us, though, since everyone who survived was a contrary asshole taking out their trauma on everybody else. Shitty company, is what I’m saying.

You’ve no idea what a thing it was to meet you, angel. You’re a bastard sometimes but you’re not an asshole.

Getting ahead of myself. Gonna need a top-off to tell the next part. Thanks.

Yeah, so, anyway. After an eternity being sucked into the vacuum that was what was left of my soul when She took Her grace away, something changed a little bit. Sort of better, and sort of worse. Who am I kidding? It was all bad. I guess different is good sometimes. Until you recognize things can always get worse.

It sort of crept up on me, but I realized I knew where _down_ was. And there was air that I was falling through, which was a thing, and then. Well. She’d made this thing She called the firmament, you know? And I discovered it. BAM! That’s how I discovered it. Didn’t need a brain for that discovery. It fucking hurt.

You’d think I’d have stopped Falling then, but that’s not how it works, no. Not when you’re damned. When you fly, angel, it’s grace that holds you up. Without it, you sink like a stone. You even sink _into_ stone. News to me. I guess it was news to all the other Fallen, too. Sank right in to that not-at-all-firm Firmament. Down and down. Not a comfortable process, falling through the Earth when you don’t know how to stop. We all learned, eventually, but it wasn’t something She’d seen fit to teach us before.

Good news was the Firmament is finite. Only so far you can fall. Bad news was, all the other fuckers who’d Fallen before me got there first. I must’ve been one of the last because I was pretty close to the top of the pile. I think. Hard to tell, in all the darkness and being fucking buried in the center of a fucking planet. Down near the bottom they were all overlapping with each other, some of them never sorted themselves out. I think the boss ate some of them. Would explain how he got so big. Anyway, like I said, I was lucky, I was near the top, but it was a confusing business. Even when we figured out whose wing was whose and whose eyes and legs and heads and antennae and whatnot we were all like squeezed all in to each other.

Long story short, most of us eventually figured out where our edges were and what our new magic rules were. What we didn’t really get was, we’d had air and water taken from us, along with Her grace. Could still work fire and earth though. And time! That was a laugh. Can stop time anytime I want! Just to enjoy a little extra time in Hell! I’m a creative bastard though, I got that to work for me.

So. Yeah. Fire. Somebody did something with fire. Was a new kind of thing, Hellfire. A bit different from cold Angel fire. And we didn’t do water, but we didn’t know that. Hellfire’s really good at burning angel wings, turns out. Really fucking good at it. No way to stop it, once it starts. Just got to take the fuel away.

So, yeah. That’s how the burning started. Wasn’t anywhere to go. Hell wasn’t anything but Fallen angels then. Fire spread. Lotta fuel. Does a really good job on angel wings, Hellfire.

I got really good at stopping time then, let me tell you. Wriggled my way out. Tunneled through a little earth, found a safe spot away from all the fire. I don’t know how many other demons figured that out. Not the kind of thing you ask casual acquaintances. Pretty sure not many of them still have their wings. I saved mine, in the little hole I made, much good that does me. Can’t fly without grace. They just itch, now, and burn sometimes, but I’m whole, sort of.

Yeah, uh, no, not today. Maybe sometime. This. This is a lot, angel. Wings’d be a bit, more. A bit much. I want to. Sometime. Can’t today. Want to, though. Ask me again sometime. Yeah.

I need another drink. Thanks.

That whole thing with the hellfire. It was a thing. I just….went away for a while. I had my safe little burrow. Wasn’t so bad compared to the Hellfire and being surrounded by screaming burning ex-angels. Was better, being by myself, for a while. Me and my sucking black hole keeping me company. I think it might’ve been a long while. Time was still funny then. Definitely was a long while.

Not much else to the story. Eventually a destruction crew found my hiding spot. They were ripping open some earth to make a void for a new conference room. While I’d been napping they’d set up a whole hierarchy and all, got real focused on crossing whatever Heaven wanted to do. Securing souls. Still not sure what that’s all about, to be honest.

I don’t think they quite knew what to make of me—I’d missed all the early infighting, was outside the ranking. Had the wings still, and all, wasn’t quite as demonish as the other demons. Not the most powerful in magic but pretty quick on my feet. Good at blending in.

Heaven had their construction project going, the Eden thing, and Hell’s management wanted to stir things up. I was happy to go, didn’t really want to learn how not to get eaten down there. They told me to go upstairs and make some trouble. Wasn’t sure what that meant but I was done asking questions for a while, you know? Just wanted to keep my nose to the ground, stay out of the way of the higher-ups. Pretty funny that She had the same plan for me, right? Nose to the ground? Eh?

Oh don’t look so shocked. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? Being a snake’s not so bad. Can’t fly, can’t taste food, but I’ll bet I enjoy a good sunbeam more than you do. And at least I get to be up here. Most of Hell has no idea what they’re missing. S’nice up here.

That’s pretty much all there is to say about Falling.

Oh, don’t say that, angel. I’d never have fit in in Heaven. Never would’ve stayed. And it’s not all bad, really.

I’ve got _you_ , don’t I? Used to think I was a danger to you. Now I know better. You’d have Fallen millennia ago if I hadn’t been here to do your dirty work. Caught you before you could Fall, angel. Best thing I ever did. Well, maybe second best. Pretty proud of the work I did in Eden. Look what humans did with all their Knowledge.

Shut the hell up. Don’t you ever talk about yourself like that. You _are_ deserving. You’re _more_ than deserving. You’ve got enough grace for the both of us.

To Hell with Heaven. And Hell. You, and humanity. That’s all there is. That’s all I need. Worth every bit of it. Worth Falling for.

**Author's Note:**

> I can hear all of this very clearly in Crowley's voice in my own head but not sure if it makes any sense at all when put down on paper. Kudos and comments give me life and I welcome and enjoy constructive criticism.


End file.
